基思‧阿纳特

基思.阿纳特1930年生于牛津,是一位观念艺术家及摄影师。

阿纳特曾就读牛津艺术学校和伦敦皇家艺术学院,其后任教于利物浦艺术学院、曼彻斯特艺术学院,以及格温特高等教育学院美术系。

1960至70年代,阿纳特以概念艺术家身份在各地举行展览,通过电影和摄影去记录演出。1967年开始,他把对象和人物放在自然风景和室内场景中,然后以摄影作记录,被称之为「情景」,而他本人及其行为亦逐渐成为作品重要的主体。在《自我埋葬(电视干扰计划)》(1969)中,阿纳特呈现自己逐渐被埋于地下的照片;当影像连续播放时,他就如同被地面吞噬一样。阿纳特说:「作品的原意,是对『艺术品的消失』这说法置评。」作品于1969年在德国科隆WDR电视播出,在没有作任何解释的情况下,连续一个星期每晚的电视频道都被中断两秒来播放阿纳特的影像。

阿纳特受摄影家沃尔克.埃文斯、奥古斯特.桑德和戴安.阿勃斯的启发,在纪实摄影尚未流行时,已开始探索这形式。初时采用黑白摄影,后来逐渐运用彩色,并从身边各样琐事中寻找题材,从垃圾堆所发现的东西,以至廷特恩修道院的游客均有。当中最著名的系列之一《来自乔的便条》,就是阿纳特拍摄并放大亡妻所写的家事备忘。作品流露平凡事物中的美、幽默和亲密的感觉。

他后期的作品,例如《砖块》(1990),都是印在光面纸上的,前景放置对象而背景则漆黑一片。这些作品是一系列普通对象如油漆罐、园艺装饰品等的大特写。阿纳特虽然充份意识到对对象作如此诱人的描画,会与广告类近,但在阿纳特的作品里,这种手法却代表了「向消费品告别的仪式」。

阿纳特虽然没有正式的画廊代理,但英国文化协会曾广泛地在海外巡回展出他的作品。2007年,他的主要作品回顾展「我是一个真正的摄影师」,在伦敦的摄影家画廊展出。

阿纳特在2008年去世,享年78岁。

Keith Arnatt

Keith Arnatt was a conceptual artist and photographer, born in Oxford in 1930.

He studied at the Oxford School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London and later taught in the Fine Art Department at Liverpool College of Art, Manchester College of Art and Gwent College of Higher Education.

In the 1960s and 70s Arnatt exhibited widely as a conceptual artist, documenting performances in film and photography. In 1967 Arnatt began to make what he called “situations”— involving objects and people situated in landscape and indoor settings which were recorded photographically and in which the artist and his behaviour were increasingly important as subject matter. In Self Burial (Television Interference Project) (1969), Arnatt presented still images of himself gradually being buried further into the ground so that when the images are run in sequence it is as if the earth has swallowed him. He said “It was originally made as a comment upon the notion of ‘the disappearance of the art object’ ”. The project was aired on German television network WDR Television, Cologne in 1969 when, for one week, programming was interrupted without explanation for two seconds every night and the image of Arnatt was broadcast.

Inspired by the photography of Walker Evans, August Sander and Diane Arbus, Arnatt began to explore the documentary photographic form at a time when it was an unfashionable medium. He worked initially in black and white before moving into colour and looking to details in his immediate surroundings for his subjects; these ranged from items unearthed in rubbish dumps to tourists visiting Tintern Abbey. One of his best known series is titled Notes from Jo for which Arnatt photographed and enlarged domestic reminders written by his late wife. Arnatt reveals the beauty, intimacy and humour in these seemingly mundane missives.

His later works, like Brick (1990), were printed on glossy paper with the object to the fore and the background thrown into deep black. The photographs are a series of close-up, large scale images of banal objects including paint tins and garden ornaments. The artist was well aware of the analogy to advertising in this seductive rendition of the subject, but in Arnatt’s work they are “the last rites of consumer goods”.

Arnatt had no formal gallery representation but his photographs were toured extensively overseas by the British Council and a major retrospective exhibition entitled I’m a Real Photographer was shown at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2007.

Arnatt died in 2008, aged 78.